Nautiscarader's Wendip Week prompt 2: Promise
by nautiscarader
Summary: Very short prompt I managed to cram in a few hours about Dipper struggling with deadlines. Might come back to it later.
A young man was sitting in front of a computer screen in his dimly lit room. The only source of light came from the white screen of an empty document, speckled with a black cursor steadily blinking at the start of a new line. In the past few hours, the cursor has moved a few spaces ahead, after the owner of the computer typed a word "The", only to delete it after he changed his mind.
There was little to no progress being made on the paper, as its window was buried underneath several dozen of others. Some were constantly printing lines of messy codes to decipher; another tried establishing a steady connection to a server that should not exist. Another showed a webpage with a long list of boring homework problems, diametrically opposite to the interests of the person currently sleeping next to the keyboard.

That person was Dipper Pines, who in the past few months has made several mistakes. He kept studying his favourite subjects, but he was realistic about his future. He knew that cryptography was more profitable than cryptozoology, even though he had achievements in both of these fields... although truth to be told he wasn't able to publicly speak about either of them, at least according to both Ford and Stan (it was one of the unusual cases of them agreeing on something).

And thus, it was already the first week of summer, and he was stuck with due projects and late assignments that kept piling up. The stacks of books and notes were slowly covering items he gather for the annual trip to Oregon he would take with his sister. This year, only Pine left Piedmont. Deep down Dipper felt horrible. He kept having nightmares about practically everyone being angry at him for missing the deadlines, from his teachers to Ford who kept an eye on their private research.

He was in the middle of one of them, when breeze of fresh, cold air and a calm voice awoke him from his troubling slumber.

\- Dude, when was the last time you vented this room?

Dipper opened his eyes, trying to figure out if he is still dreaming or not. His vision had to adapt to the lighting in his room, dominated by his monitor's glow. His ears were filled with ringing noise of unknown origin. The voice he heard was coming from a person, whose silhouette was clearly visible standing in front of the window; Dipper could see that it was moving slowly towards his desk, until he finally recognised the face.

\- Wendy? Wha-what are you doing here?  
\- Dipper... - Wendy sat on his bed with him - It's about this.

She took a piece of neatly folded paper from her shirt's pocket and started opening it. Dipper didn't had to look, it was a letter he wrote to her last time he saw her. Even in the darkness of his room, he could still see his "See you next summer!" written on the back.

\- Wendy, I'm sorry I broke the promise, but I had work to do-

He was cut short by her.

\- No, I didn't mean that. I meant the part when you wrote that "you'll be okay".

She moved closer to him and put an arm on his shoulder.

\- You don't have do this alone. Mabel was devastated when she arrived. I was. We all were. We're going to help you, no matter what.

He felt relieved that she offered him a helping hand, especially after he rejected Mabel's, just because he wasn't able to put aside his pride, but at the same time remembered how much work he still had to do.

\- It's much more than you think...  
\- Hey, and who was the smartass who told me that story about the guy with monkeys trying to write all works of Shakespeare? A couple papers will be nothing for us.

Dipper was about to correct her that it was a thought experiment, and more importantly it utilised an infinite amount of monkeys, but then he realised that Wendy was speaking about more than one person. Then he understood that the constant murmurs and noises were coming not from the fans on his machine, but from their front garden through his window's room.  
A group of at least twenty people were having an impromptu party mixed with what could be considered a barbecue in some parts of the civilised world. He recognised most of them: Wendy's high school friends, Candy and Grenda gossiping with Mabel, who apparently came with them, Soos with his girlfriend Melody and Fiddleford who unfortunately was put in charge of food.

\- Di-Did you all come to help me?  
\- Yup. - she quickly reassured him, placing a kiss on his cheek. - You know the saying, if the mountain won't come to Muhammed...  
\- Wait, do our parents know about it?  
\- Yeah, Mabel told them.

A loud shriek sounding very much like his mother screaming reached their ears from downstairs.

\- ...probably, like right now. Stan's gonna convince them.

"Oh, god we're dead. And grounded. For ever. But at least the homework's gonna be done.", Dipper thought.


End file.
